How to Choose a Safe Browser (Including AI Browsers)

What makes a browser 'safe'

Ignore the marketing and judge a browser on a few concrete properties:

• Tracker blocking on by default — not something you must hunt for in settings.
• Anti-fingerprinting — either standardising your signals (blend in) or randomising them (add noise).
• Third-party cookies blocked by default.
• Frequent security updates and a fast patch cadence.
• A transparent business model — if the browser is free, understand how it makes money.
• Open source, so independent researchers can audit what it actually does.

The mainstream options, ranked for privacy

For most people, the practical privacy ranking looks like this:

• Tor Browser — the strongest anonymity; standardises fingerprints and routes traffic through multiple relays. Slower, best for sensitive browsing.
• Brave — blocks trackers and ads and randomises fingerprinting signals by default; Chromium-based, so most sites just work.
• Firefox — set Enhanced Tracking Protection to Strict and enable resist-fingerprinting; independent, open source, not built on Chromium.
• Safari — solid defaults on Apple devices with Intelligent Tracking Prevention and third-party cookie blocking.
• Chrome / Edge — the most common, the least private out of the box; both are tied to advertising businesses (Google and Microsoft).

What AI browsers are

AI browsers build a large language model directly into the browsing experience. Instead of just showing pages, they can summarise what you're reading, answer questions about it, and — in their most powerful 'agentic' mode — act on your behalf: clicking, filling forms, and completing multi-step tasks across sites.

Examples include Perplexity's Comet, The Browser Company's Dia, Microsoft Edge with Copilot, Chrome with Gemini, Opera's AI features, and Brave's Leo. Capabilities and privacy defaults vary widely between them and change quickly.

The new privacy trade-off

AI features are useful, but they change what leaves your device. To summarise or act on a page, the browser often sends that page's content — sometimes including logged-in, private pages — to a remote model. 'Memory' features that make the assistant more helpful work by retaining a history of what you browse. And agentic modes that can click and type on your behalf are a powerful capability to hand to software that can misread a page or be manipulated by malicious content.

• Assume anything you ask the AI about a page may be sent to and processed by a remote server.
• Check whether the AI is on by default or opt-in, and whether it can read pages you're logged into.
• Look for a setting to disable memory/history retention, and to exclude sensitive sites (banking, health, email).
• Be cautious with agentic 'do things for me' modes on sites involving money, credentials, or personal data.

How to use an AI browser more safely

• Prefer browsers that process AI requests with a clear, readable privacy policy and an opt-out of training on your data.
• Turn the assistant off for banking, email, and health sites, or use a separate plain browser for those.
• Keep tracker and fingerprint protection enabled — AI features don't replace them.
• Review and clear the assistant's memory regularly, the same way you'd clear history.